


A Boy Brushed Red Living In Black And White

by orphan_account



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Artist Grantaire, Character Death, Cutting, Death, Deathfic, Frustration, M/M, Painting, Poor Enjolras, Self-Destruction, Self-Harm, Worship, dying for said perfection, oh these poor babies, searching for unatainable perfection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 21:15:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/944739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No matter how many times he tried, and tried, and tried, he couldn’t get it right.</p><p>He just couldn’t get it right.</p><p>It was that stupid coat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Boy Brushed Red Living In Black And White

                It wasn’t right.

                Grantaire paced circles through his apartment, hands tangled in his hair, leaving streaks of pale yellow and pink and blue in the impossibly dark curls.

                It wasn’t right.

                No matter how many times he tried, and tried, and _tried_ , he couldn’t get it right.

                He turned on his heel to face the semicircle of easels that had grown in the last few days to encompass most of his apartment. No canvas had been left blank, but none of them were completed, either.

                He just couldn’t get it right.

                He sighed, fisting his hands in his hair as he surveyed the paintings in various stages of completion. “Why?” he asked aloud. “Why can’t I make you as perfect here as you are in my mind, and in reality?”

                The dozens of renderings of Enjolras gazed back in silence, painted eyes unblinking as they stared at Grantaire.

                He made a sound of desperate frustration. The eyes, the hair, the range of expressions—from condescending (aimed at himself) to indulgent (Jehan) to content (Combeferre and Courfeyrac)—on every interpretation of the blonde man’s face were all replicated with precision and fine detail on Grantaire’s canvases, but something was off and it was driving Grantaire completely _mad_.

                It was that stupid coat.

                Enjolras never took the damn thing off, _ever_ , and so of course it made an appearance in every painting. And, for the life of him, Grantaire couldn’t mix a shade of red to match it. He’d tried close to sixty and was nowhere close. He sighed in resigned disappointment and pulled out his pocket knife to start cutting canvases off their stretchers. He flicked the blade out and reached for the closest canvas, started slicing through it.

                Suddenly, his phone blared loudly on the kitchen counter, causing him to yelp and jump simultaneously, then swear loudly as the knife blade sliced up into the pad of his thumb. He grabbed the phone with his uninjured hand and growled, “Hello?”

                “Hey, ‘Taire!”

                “Don’t tell me to shut up.”

                Speak of the devil, and the devil shall appear. Grantaire frowned as he pulled the phone away from his ear to peer at the screen. Sure enough, there was the familiar contact photo.

                “I _said_ , hey, ‘Taire!” Enjolras trilled again.

                “Yes, hello, I’m busy, what do you want?” he snapped.

                “You said you finished the illustration.” There was a pause. “You know. For Jehan’s poem?” Another pause. “The one that’s going in the school paper—never mind.”

                “No, no, I remember now. I finished it. Should I bring it to class tomorrow?”

                “Nah,” Enjolras laughed. “I’ll just come over. You’re on my way, anyways. ‘Ponine asked me to come babysit Gav for a couple hours. Not that I mind; that kid’s freakin’ adorable.”

                “When should I expect you?” he interjected, cutting Enjolras out of his ramblings.

                “Oh, um, thirty minutes? Forty-five?”

                “See you then.”

                “Byyyye, ‘Taire.”

                He hung up and tossed his phone back on the counter, noticing the blood on his thumb as it dripped towards his wrist. He brought the wound to his mouth to suck on it and stopped short, his arm raised awkwardly before him. Something had caught his eye.

                The blood.

                It was the perfect shade of red.

                He smiled, artistic fire finally quenched.

                From there, it was too easy. Too easy to reach for the knife, carve along the white lines already marring his right wrist. To dip the fingers of his left hand into the rich red there and smooth it onto his canvases, covering the tired shades he had previously tried. To cut again, again, deeper, deeper as the blood poured more freely, so full of energy and life, so like Enjolras. Black spots danced in his vision and he began to feel woozy, but just gripped the edges of his easels tighter as he moved slowly from one to the next, perfecting them as he went. He was so caught up in his work that he didn’t hear his door open, didn’t hear the footsteps, didn’t hear anything until he heard a horrified voice gasp out his name, “Grantaire?”

                He turned, the sudden motion sending him—and the painting he was clutching—to the floor. He blinked up slowly as the black receded and there was Enjolras, more prefect than Grantaire could have ever captured him in any medium. “Enj?”

                “Grantaire,” the blonde man breathed, sinking to his knees, “What’ve you _done_?” He reached for the painter’s right arms, the pale, soft skin on the inside of his wrist and forearm mangled and bleeding heavily, staining Enjolras’s own fingers red. “What’ve you done?” he repeated softly, brokenly as he pulled the hand to his cheek and turned his head slightly to press his lips against the cuts. When he released Grantaire’s wrist, a streak of blood was left on his face, spreading from his lips across his cheek.

                Grantaire reached over to weakly flick his left thumb through the blood pulsing out of his arm and dabbed it along the cheek of the painted Enjolras he had propped against his leg. “There,” he smiled as white spots replaced the black ones, flickering in his vision. “You’re perfect.”

**Author's Note:**

> Don't read this, JFC. I wrote this crap when I was an angst-y high schooler who didn't know any better.


End file.
